Bitten the Bug Challenge: Dog

The challenge over at Bitten By The Bug 2 this week was to use a dog die cut. The specific one they were requesting I didn't have. But the girls there are always so good about allowing substitutions. This pup is from the Animal Kingdom cartridge. Unfortunately, the pictures are quite old (from my oldest child's preschool days), but I had never gotten around to scrapping them. This challenge inspired me to do a play on words and I found this group of photos with my daughter in some of her earliest social settings. Since I was using slang, I decided my dog needed to be more "dawg", so I gave him a little crown (cut from Celebrations cartridge), sitting lop-sided, of course. His blinged-up collar, nails and tails were done with Stickles. It wasn't until I was just about done with the page that I realized the one friend is carrying a stuffed dog. A dawg carrying a dog!!! Lol!

Christmas Leftovers

Here's some leftovers everyone will like. I did so many projects around Christmas-time that I forgot to take pics of some of them, and then I lost the SD card on which I had taken the ones I did remember.

For both Thanksgiving and Christmas, I signed up for snacks for my kids' classrooms. I made the traditional Chex Mix minus the peanuts (allergies, ya' know). I made individual servings by putting the mix in snack size baggies. Using my Cricut, I added seasonal appropriate images for each snack baggie. Then I took a paper bad, but the top 8 inches or so off and folded the top down to get as much of plain brown as possible. Refolding the cut-off of the top, I was able to make a long handle which was stapled on the sides and then taped w/ packing tape to the bottom to reinforce the bag. Finally, I decorated the outside of the big paper bag w/ additional die cuts from the Cricut. I also added rafia to the Thanksgiving one giving it an extremely country rustic look. It was so stinkin' cute - and I forgot to snag a picture!

Then, I found these instructions for making these sock cupcakes on greenbean's crafterole blog. She even had the file for the wrapper which she created in Design Studio. So with a quick cut on my Cricut and a rolling of the socks, I had super cute teacher gifts. I even ordered some small bottles of Hemp Lotion which I ticked deep inside the roll. I found cellophane bags, which I think were created for treat bags for birthday parties. Ties 'em off with a ribbon and I was done. They were a hit. I watched my sales and got the socks for anywhere from $2- $3 a pair.

I guess "Better Late Than Never" is the right mentality on this posting!

Hollywood: Diva Heaven

I had so much fun making the pom rosettes from the necklace and hairband (see previous posts) that I was inspired to extrapolate the idea to scrapping. I am STILL trying to finish our vacation pictures from July!!! So when the pictures of our day in Hollywood slid across my scrapping table landing on top of my fabric circles leftover from the poms I suddenly knew what the person who invented Reece's felt like! A perfect blend of two beautiful ingredients!

The gorgeous borders on the sides are cardstock border stickers from Glitz It Now. Since these pages feature my tween daughter, I thought doing some hand drawn doodling would set a nice tone for the page. The fabric circles used to make the flowers are left over from my pom necklace and headband projects. Originally, the fabric was used to make flower girl dresses a year ago. I LOVE getting so much mileage from my leftovers! The black ribbon is actually seam binding that someone gave to me because they didn't know how to use it. Actually, I don't know how to use seam binding properly, either! But doesn't it look nice as a stem for a flower?

I've discovered my key for creativity. I always thought the creative process started with an abstract free-standing idea that one brings to life. Those thoughts never come my way (unless it's a rare moment when I am in the bathroom BY MYSELF, and then they typically aren't centered on scrapping or crafting). But what I have learned is that I can take one idea or method and contort it into something new, either by changing my medium, method or application. These really are all big words for "stealing"! Turns out, I can steal pretty good!